by Janet Dawson
“Never been arrested,” Lindsey said. “Marched in my share of antiwar demonstrations. But I haven’t torched any buildings. No scandals in my past. I’m just a hick from Paso Robles.”
Annabel chuckled and held out her hand. “Welcome to Berkeley, Lindsey. If you can’t be scandalous here, you’re not trying.”
Lindsey shook Annabel’s hand. “I’m going to enjoy living here.”
“I’m sure you will.” Annabel pulled a typewritten sheet of paper from the manila folder, wrote Lindsey’s name and the date at the top, and signed her own name at the bottom. “I don’t bother with leases or anything like that, but you’ll need some sort of verification that you’ve rented the place, so I wrote up what passes for a rental agreement. The electricity’s still on and the phone is connected. I had the girl who moved out transfer those accounts to my name. Easier that way. All you have to do is go downtown and fill out paperwork at Pacific Gas and Electric and Ma Bell.” Annabel opened one of the desk drawers and took out a ring holding two brass keys. “The big one fits in the front and back doors. Which we do keep locked at night. The little one is to your apartment. It’s official.”
Someone opened Annabel’s door. The blonde in the red bikini strolled in, a twinkle in her sharp blue eyes. “Well?”
“We have a new housemate,” Annabel said. “Lindsey Page, this is Claire Megarris.”
“Welcome to the gilded cage,” Claire said. “You’re no freshman. Transfer student?”
“Grad student, history. Got my bachelor’s and master’s at UC Santa Barbara.”
“Undergrad,” Claire said. “Business and econ.”
“Also undergrad,” Annabel said. “English major, history minor.”
“I guessed that from your bookcases,” Lindsey said.
Annabel laughed. “Keats is a dead giveaway.”
“And the fourth tenant?” Lindsey asked.
The house’s outer door opened, admitting a tall, big-boned woman with long sandy curls, brown eyes in a square freckled face. Her cotton shirt sported a McGovern button and her faded jeans were decorated with beads. She stopped in the doorway of Annabel’s apartment. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself,” Annabel said. “This is Gretchen Kohl. Grad student, sociology.”
Lindsey smiled. “Lindsey Page. Grad student, history.”
“Glad to meet you,” Gretchen said. “When are you moving in?”
“As soon as I can,” Lindsey said. “I’ve been staying with my aunt in North Berkeley.”
“If there’s anything you need,” Annabel said, “like sheets, towels, kitchen stuff, to tide you over until you get the rest of your things, just ask.”
Gretchen looked at her watch. “Gotta run and make myself gorgeous.”
“Got a date?” Claire asked. “Who with?”
“That guy I told you about, Doug Segal. He’s a first-year law student up at Boalt Hall.” Gretchen shook her finger. “But no poaching. I saw him first.”
“I’ll be too busy to have much of a social life,” Lindsey said.
“We’ll see about that.” Claire winked and turned to Gretchen. “I expect a full report when you return. If you return.”
Gretchen blushed. “Claire! It’s dinner and a movie, not a lifelong commitment.”
Claire laughed. “Who says there has to be a commitment? Shall I wait up?”
“If you feel like waiting up, be my guest. Now I have to get ready. Nice to meet you, Lindsey.” Gretchen raced up the stairs.
“Go collect your things,” Annabel told Lindsey. “We’ll have dinner later. We’ll pool our resources and have scintillating mealtime conversation. Which makes up for the fact that Claire can’t cook worth a damn.”
“I don’t need to cook,” Claire said. “As long as there are restaurants and takeout. Or salads. I’m really good at tearing lettuce.”
“I could make a run over to that grocery store you mentioned,” Lindsey said.
“That’s okay,” Annabel said. “We’ll pick your brain instead. If you’re going to be living here we have to know all about you. Details, the gorier the better.”
“Same here,” Lindsey said.
Claire laughed. “Are you sure? Could be dangerous.” She struck a pose at the foot of the stairs and trilled in an English accent just like Deborah Kerr, “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.”
Lindsey retrieved her green VW and drove to downtown Berkeley, where she had the power switched to her name and arranged for phone service. Then she drove back to her aunt’s house, packed her belongings, and loaded them into the VW.
Serendipity provided Lindsey with a parking place in front of her new home on Hillegass Street. Claire, in skin-tight jeans and a lacy blouse, was on the sidewalk talking with a lanky, long-haired guy. As Lindsey got out of the VW, Claire peered through the car’s windows. “Is this all you’ve got?” Claire beckoned to the guy. “Hey, Jody, this is Lindsey. She’s moving in. Give us a hand.”
Jody acknowledged Lindsey with a nod and opened the passenger-side door. “Where d’you want this stuff?”
“First door on the right, thanks.” Lindsey picked up her typewriter and started up the walk. Annabel opened the front door.
“Welcome home,” Annabel said. “Need some help?”
When Lindsey’s possessions were inside the apartment, she hung towels in the bathroom and made the bed. Claire appeared with an armful of pots and pans and piled them on the kitchen counter. “As Annabel pointed out, my cooking skills are minimal. I have no desire to improve them. I haven’t boiled, broiled, or baked anything in ages. You might as well have these.”
“Thanks,” Lindsey said.
“You’re welcome. You two are on your own for dinner. Jody and I are going out.”
“I thought you were going to tear lettuce,” Annabel said. “No matter. I’ve got salad fixings in the fridge and chicken in the oven.”
“I could at least contribute some coffee,” Lindsey said, unpacking a tin of Folger’s from a box of foodstuffs her aunt had provided.
Claire laughed. “Coffee we’ve got. Courtesy of Dunlin Corporation.”
“What’s Dunlin Corporation?” Lindsey asked.
“Coffee,” Annabel said. “They import it, roast it, sell it. Anything to do with coffee.”
“Also tea and spices,” Claire added. “My father started the company. Now Annabel’s father runs it. Annabel and I are cousins. My mother is her father’s sister.”
“We’ll get acquainted while we fix dinner,” Annabel said.
“Catch you later.” Claire stepped out into the hall and glanced up. “Well, look at you.”
Lindsey and Annabel crowded into the doorway. Gretchen posed on the landing, wearing a floral print dress with a scooped neck and a gauzy skirt. Her unruly curls were tied back with a scarf, and multicolored beads dangled from her neck and earlobes. She twirled and the skirt swirled around her hips. “What do you think?”
“You look gorgeous,” Claire said. “He won’t be able to keep his hands off you.”
“At this point I just want to get to know him,” Gretchen said, “not have a wrestling match.” They heard footsteps on the porch steps. “That’s him now.”
6
The day she’d had the stroke kept playing in Annabel’s mind like an old movie, the film broken in the middle of the reel, then inexpertly spliced together, in fragments, without continuity. She heard Claire’s teasing voice—“...aging Wimbledon rejects...” She saw herself lying on the tennis court, body jerking as horrified faces stared down at her. The ambulance screamed down the hill to the hospital. In the emergency room people hovered over her, bright lights contrasting with darkness as voices clamored and machines beeped.
Another room, with muted light, doctors, nurses. Her husband, Hal, slumped in a chair next to her bed, exhaustion and anxiety painting his face. She tried to speak and instead croaked like a frog. She tried to reach for Hal. Her hand was frozen. The confusion gave way to real
ization, panic, despair. Her body didn’t work properly. The pathways from brain to fingers had been interrupted. She was trapped, unable to speak or move.
Days blurred into weeks. They brought her from the hospital to this place, a private room with round-the-clock care, more nurses and doctors and therapists. She’d been here several weeks now, speech and movement gradually returning as the therapists worked with her.
Memories of the past, many unwelcome, crowded into her head. Memories she’d kept at bay for years lurked in the shadows at the edge of her mind, waiting to torment her again.
Annabel shook her head, coming back to the present. It was early afternoon. She’d had an exhausting physical therapy session that morning. Forcing her limbs to move according to the therapist’s regimen left her tired and wrung out. Hal arrived at noon, bringing lunch from a nearby deli. They ate while Hal talked and she was content to listen. After Hal left, she thought she would nap. Instead the memories came, pushing unbidden into her head.
Annabel at fifteen on Haight Street, in 1967, the Summer of Love—the day she found Lily again, after losing her for so many years.
She and Claire had cut class to come to the Haight that day. They wandered along the street, poking around in the shops, looking at clothes, watching the people. Annabel felt transported, exhilarated. In front of a shop, a man puffed on a joint. Annabel sneezed. She didn’t like the smell of pot or patchouli oil.
At the end of Haight Street they crossed to Golden Gate Park and Hippie Hill, where hordes of people, fish moving with the school, pooled on the gentle slope, swimming lazily to music. The air was redolent with marijuana. Annabel sneezed again, then stretched out on the grass. On a nearby radio Grace Slick’s mesmerizing voice spun out the lyrics to “Somebody to Love.” Then Claire went off with some guy. Angry at being abandoned, Annabel scrambled to her feet and walked back down Haight Street. She talked to one of the hippies, resplendent in a tie-dyed T-shirt and paisley pants. He laughed as he crowned her head with daisies. “If you come to San Francisco,” Annabel sang in a sweet, clear soprano, smiling as she saw herself mirrored in the store window. Now she was one of the gentle people with flowers in their hair.
But the man and the woman who suddenly stumbled in front of her weren’t gentle. They were damned scary. The woman’s long blond hair made her look like an angel, but she cursed and hit the man with her balled-up fist. The man struck back, a hard blow to her stomach, knocking the woman against the building. She slid down the wall and landed with a thump, vomiting onto the sidewalk. The man grabbed her wrist and wrenched open her fist, prying money from her fingers. He stuck the greenbacks into his jeans and strode away. The woman struggled to her feet, wiping vomit from her chin with her purple gauze sleeve.
Annabel shrank back, eyes wide, nose assailed by the stench behind the cloying incense of Haight Street. She saw past the colorful clothes on the people around her, saw unwashed bodies and dirty fingernails.
Then Annabel saw Lily, coming out of a corner market. She gasped, then ran to catch up with the older woman who had worked for the Dunlins for so many years.
Lily had gone away after the fire. She’d put a pot roast in a pressure cooker on the gas range in the kitchen, and turned the flame down low while she went out for half an hour, to have a cup of tea with the housekeeper next door. But the flame burned higher, not lower. Liquid evaporated, meat and vegetables shriveled into dry tinder and burned. The flames ignited the cabinets and fire spread through the kitchen, filling the house with smoke. When Annabel came home from school, a red fire truck blocked the sidewalk in front of the house and smoke filled the air, gray like fog. But it stank of burn and char, unlike the fresh salty mist off the ocean.
That’s why they made Lily go away. Because of the fire. Because Lily was careless. At least, that’s what they said.
Now Annabel shuffled the memories like cards, trying to put them in order. She reached for the television remote. Maybe there was a movie she could watch, one that didn’t star her.
Her older daughter Tess entered the room, carrying a bouquet of flowers. She was tall and slender, with intense blue eyes. Dark hair framed her face.
She looks like her father, Annabel thought.
“How are you feeling today?” Tess kissed Annabel on the forehead. “I’m between appointments. So I thought I’d come and see you.” Tess discarded the wilting flowers from the old arrangement on the bedside table. She filled the vase with water and began arranging the mixture of iris, freesia, Shasta daisies, and baby’s breath.
“If you come to San Francisco,” Annabel sang, her voice almost a whisper.
“Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. That’s an old song.” Tess plucked a daisy from the bouquet and tucked it behind her mother’s ear. “There. Flowers in your hair.” She sat down next to the bed. “That’s not the only reason I came to see you.”
Annabel frowned. “Why?”
Tess took a deep breath. “I know Hal isn’t my father. I had a blood test. The whole family went to donate blood after you had the stroke. We had tests to type our blood. My blood type doesn’t match yours. Or his. So he’s not my father. You could have told me. I’m past thirty. Who is my father?”
Silence. Annabel reeled away from memories long suppressed. Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t speak. It wasn’t due to the aphasia. She’d spent a lifetime keeping secrets, glossing over the truth. She wasn’t ready to have this conversation. Not now. Maybe not ever. But eventually she must. Just as Lily had finally answered Annabel’s question, so many years ago.
Tell me how my mother died, Annabel asked. Tell me what you saw. Maybe later, Lily said, a closed look on her face. Later, when you’re older.
Tess’s jaw tightened. “At first I was angry. I’m still upset. It’s taken me weeks to work up to this. I don’t want to hurt you, Mother. But I have to know about my father. I can’t have this question mark hanging over me.”
Annabel closed her eyes, unable to face her daughter. She knew that look. Her daughter had a will of iron. Tess wouldn’t be deterred. The truth was there, for anyone who wanted to root it out. She opened her eyes.
Tess sighed. “I know you don’t want to talk about this now. But I have to know, Mother. If you won’t tell me, or you can’t, I’ll ask Lindsey. Surely she knows. Or she can help me.” Tess sighed and glanced at her watch. “I need to get back to work. I’m meeting a client in Berkeley. Maybe I’ll see Lindsey afterwards.”
But Lindsey has secrets of her own to keep, Annabel thought.
“Tess,” Annabel said finally, the sibilance like hissing snakes, a tangle of lies threatening to slither from their hiding place. “I love you.”
“I know.” Tess fingered her necklace. Annabel hadn’t seen it before. It was a tiny silver pineapple swinging from a silver chain.
A silver pineapple... Annabel’s heart pounded. Here was a memory she would never be free of, etched in her brain, as though it had happened yesterday. A Friday afternoon in April. Mother’s eyes had been open, but they’d stared unblinking at the ceiling. She looked as though she’d awakened from a nightmare and found the goblins still there to greet her.
7
San Francisco, California, April 1961
Annabel thumped her shoes against the wooden chair in the principal’s office. “My tummy hurts. I want to go home.”
Miss Simpson compressed her lips and drummed her fingers on her desk. “I’ve called your house. There’s no answer. You can’t go home by yourself. You must wait until someone comes to get you.”
“I might throw up,” Annabel declared.
Miss Simpson looked dismayed at the prospect. She consulted her address book and reached for the telephone. “I’ll call your aunt.”
Miss Simpson was a dried-up prune, her face all wrinkly, with mean eyes and a wispy moustache above her thin mouth. She hated the sound of Annabel’s feet thumping against the chair. So Annabel swung her legs faster and harder, enjoying the thump-thump-thump of her
shoes against the wood and the sour look on Miss Simpson’s face.
“Annabel! Please stop making that noise. It’s most annoying.”
That’s why I’m doing it, Annabel thought. Old Prune Face stuck a finger into the telephone dial and rotated it, rearranging her expression so she could suck up to Aunt Rebecca. That was stupid. Aunt Rebecca couldn’t see her on the phone. Miss Simpson didn’t believe the story about the tummy ache. Annabel had used that excuse once too often. But she didn’t care. She hated school—this one, anyway.
Annabel wanted to go to the public school, like her friend Sally who lived across the street. Both girls were the same age—nine—but Sally got to do whatever she wanted. She played softball in the park, roller-skated in the street, wore dungarees like a boy, and even rode the bus all by herself, downtown to Union Square or Chinatown or the Ferry Building, out to Golden Gate Park and Playland at the Beach.
But Annabel never got to do anything or go anywhere by herself. She had to go to Miss Simpson’s private school for girls and wear white blouses, green plaid skirts and Mary Janes, enduring stupid rules and dull classes, so boring that more than once Annabel had been reprimanded for reading a book on the sly rather than paying attention to lessons. She had to take a class in something called deportment, which involved manners and stupid tea parties. And there was a rumor that next year—when she started fifth grade—she’d have to take dancing. With boys.
Annabel’s stomach clenched. She might actually throw up. Sometimes her tummy aches were real. She wanted to go home and be with Lily, who would make tea and almond cookies. Annabel would snuggle into a nest made of pillows with a pile of Nancy Drews, reading until her eyes got heavy and she went to sleep.
Since Lily wasn’t home yet, Annabel would just have to go home by herself. She wriggled in the hard wooden chair and reached for the glass candy dish on the table next to her. The lid made a satisfying clink-clink-clink as she toyed with it.
“Annabel, don’t fidget.” Old Prune Face hung up the phone. “The line is busy. Your aunt is on the telephone.”
